Executive summary
- Focused improvement exists to create visible change immediately after the official TPM kickoff.
- The reason is not only efficiency — it is the psychology of participation.
- Kaizen gains decay for structural reasons, so the fix must be structural.
- Tiered daily accountability is the mechanism that sustains improvement.
- A supervisor consumed by firefighting will never build an improvement culture.
Individual Improvement goes by many names — focused improvement, specific improvement, or kobetsu kaizen in Japanese. Whatever it is called, its job is the same: to create clearly visible change immediately after the official TPM kickoff.
Beyond the production benefit, the reason is psychological. Once the programme has been launched, improvement must appear quickly and unmistakably, so that people choose to take part. The most reliable way to do that is intensive improvement on one specific topic at a time.
Why improvement decays
| Cause of decay | What actually happens | Structural fix |
|---|---|---|
| No owner after the event | The team disbands on Friday and nobody holds the new method | A named process owner with the standard in their objectives |
| No written standard | The improvement lives in the memory of those who made it | Standard work documented and trained before the event closes |
| No confirmation | Nobody checks that the standard is followed | Layered process confirmation: supervisor daily, manager weekly |
| Conditions changed | New product or volume; the standard no longer fits | A scheduled review trigger on volume or product change |
| Supervisor overloaded | The person who should hold the gain is firefighting | Free supervisor time first — a prerequisite, not a benefit |
Tiered daily accountability
- Tier 1 — shift start, 5–10 minutes, at the line Operators and team leader: yesterday’s output, safety, quality issues, the top loss, and what changes today. Held standing, at the board, in the workplace.
- Tier 2 — daily, 15–20 minutes, area level Team leaders with maintenance, quality and planning: escalations from Tier 1, countermeasure status, resource conflicts.
- Tier 3 — daily, 20–30 minutes, plant level Plant manager and department heads: escalations from Tier 2, cross-department decisions, resource commitment.
- Tier 4 — weekly, plant leadership Performance against plan, the improvement portfolio, and systemic issues needing capital or policy change.
The test that matters
Attend a Tier 1 meeting unannounced. If the board shows yesterday’s real numbers, if the operators — not the team leader — describe the top loss, and if at least one item from last week has a visibly closed countermeasure, the system is working. If the board shows last month’s data, it is theatre.
Many small improvements beat a few large ones
- Keep the suggestion route short: idea, one-page form, decision within a week.
- Let teams implement their own low-cost ideas without approval below an agreed threshold.
- Publish implemented ideas with names and photographs on the area board.
- Measure participation rate, not just savings — participation predicts next year’s savings.